


Laced drink

by sshysmm



Category: Lymond Chronicles - Dorothy Dunnett
Genre: 1980s, Alcohol, Book 2: Queens' Play, Cold War, Ficlet Collection, Gen, Poisoning, Prompt Fill, the band Au, trashed hotel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2021-01-26 23:43:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21382543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sshysmm/pseuds/sshysmm
Summary: Thady Boy Ballaght (the Artist Formerly Known as Lymond), has been poisoned - luckily by someone who doesn't know how to dose ricin properly.--Written for Whumptober 2019, set in the Band AU I've been writing (see collections).--There's 31 of these ficlets and I apologise profusely for burying other work in the tags. I will *always* tag these as 'the band au' and you can usethis nifty extension (ao3rdr)to block the tag if this isn't your thing and isn't what you want to see in the Lymond tags!
Kudos: 7
Collections: Ficlets in the Lymond Band AU for Whumptober 2019





	Laced drink

**Author's Note:**

> [Originally posted on tumblr, October 21 2019.](https://notasapleasure.tumblr.com/post/188491545844/whumptober-21)

“You are lucky,” Margaret Erskine said to the darkened room. “That the Communists have not shared their recipes with each and every sympathetic party.”

She aimed to keep her voice even as she announced her presence, just as she supposed people in her position were meant to sound: calm, authoritative, certain. She had worked as a cultural attaché in the West German embassy for nearly a year now, and rather thought that she had seen it all. Yet still Margaret winced: the room smelled like a mortuary in a power-cut. Sharp acid overlaid the sweetness of decay and decadence, and it was like wine gone to rot; petrol ruined with sugar; the taste of tarnished metal. Beneath her court shoes the plush carpet had taken on a gritty, wet texture that made her swallow down nausea. She toed aside objects that were heavy with liquid, unable to confirm that they were merely alcohol-sodden clothes, though they felt like bloody organs.

It was a big room but had become an obstacle course of furniture curated by a wild hand. Heavy chairs lay vanquished and askew, legs to the air like dead cattle. The bedclothes were a knotted rope leading nowhere, and empty bottles and cans shone dim and greasy in the black corners of carnage. Some glugged with a dejected hollowness as they were kicked aside, splashing the remnants of their contents onto patterned carpets that were not designed to hide this level of carelessness.

The only illumination came from the cityscape outside the hotel window. Munich glowed with warm light, snugly removed from the flashing watchtowers and grim Eastern darkness at the border. It was a city trying to forget recent memories of violence, hunkering down in conservative, sleepy habit that not even the Eurovision Song Contest and its associated acts of burlesque frenzy could really disturb. Outside, the damp chill of April air was masked by the welcoming sparkle of the night: the Town Hall was a golden spire above the Marienplatz, its alchemical brilliance seemingly fed by the hue of the arterial roads.

Inside the hotel, these comforting tones of illumination were twisted into hellish, sulphurous jaundice. A square of carpet sickened in their light, and its surface sparkled with foreboding when Margaret’s steps shifted the fibres in their bog of spilled wine.

She did not see the room’s occupant until she was close. To her surprise, he was on his feet - conscious, even. By the window, his face pressed into the thick drapes of a curtain he lacked the energy to draw, the musician Thady Boy, or Lymond - or maybe still to some, Francis Crawford - leaned on the weight of the metal curtain rail that bowed above him. Fabric and pole strained, though only to the same extent that his shaking body did with the effort of holding himself upright.

His muscles spasmed in acknowledgement of her proximity and he tried to lift his head, but it sank back towards the heavy material as he let out a gurgle of self-pity.

The gaudy clothes of the discotheque had been abandoned and all that remained were a clinging vest and silver trousers, unnecessarily held up by a pair of braces that sagged over his thin, sweat-glistened shoulders. The vest might once have had a pattern of its own, but had since been decorated to match the room: Margaret identified the different dyes by their colour and scent, noting the glitter of goldschläger mixing with the carpet fluff and cigarette ash that clung to his skin.

“You’ve been poisoned, Francis. Let me get you to a hospital.” The pressure of her grip turned him from the wall, and he let out a groan and an incongruous, ugly laugh as he raised a hand to swat at the orange city light.

His face, when revealed, was a mess of tension: every muscle strained to fine mimicry of the crisp bone structure beneath. His eyes nestled deep in blackened sockets, his lips were thin and blue, and the dye trickled from his hair to stain his scalp and pale skin with sooty rivulets. But in the recesses of eyes the blue of a 2am sky, Margaret saw the calmness borne of understanding.

“Castor beans. In the glühwein,” he said hoarsely.

“You knew?”

“They feed the oil to the zoo creatures in order to keep their coats glossy,” he tried to flash her a grin, but only his top lip peeled back flinchingly, and Margaret shuddered at the wine-stained snarl.

Indeed, it had been the zoo-keeper Archie who had told her, having witnessed its effects first hand on the dance floor. The jerky movements of Thady Boy’s body had been down to more than avant garde pop and the illusory effects of strobe lighting.

“Come, then,” Margaret tried to guide him, pulling at an arm that slithered in her grip like a jungle snake.

He dug his heels into the ruined carpet and gripped fistfuls of the curtain again. With effort, he shook his head. “Better to let them think I’ve an immunity or rotten good luck. If I go to hospital there will be reporters and the assassin will know precisely what he got wrong.”

Margaret’s pragmatism and discretion had won her the coveted West German position in the embassy, but she had been relieved, nonetheless, that it had not been the Eastern job: she did not have the stomach for the spy games and the pressure of constant performance. She struggled now with Francis’s mulish obstinacy, with the weight he put into his thin body as he refused to be led. “_Ricin_, Francis. You know what that means,” she hissed.

He swayed, his head lolling like a bedraggled sunflower. But when Margaret won a single step from him he jerked the thick fabric behind him, and the curtain pole gave way and tumbled down. Francis fell backwards into it with a laugh and clutched his stomach as Margaret stood over him, relieved not to have fallen too.

“Highly diluted,” he threw his head back to look up at her through heavy, slitted eyes. “Nothing I can’t weather.”


End file.
